


Found My Way Home

by tothebatcave53



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Blue Team Bonding, Domestic Fluff, Falling In Love, Fluff, Found Family, Gift Fic, M/M, Missing Scene, Tuckington - Freeform, canon typical language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22730638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothebatcave53/pseuds/tothebatcave53
Summary: Five senses, five scenes of Washington finding his family, finding his home and falling in love with one aqua colored soldier.
Relationships: Lavernius Tucker & Agent Washington, Lavernius Tucker/Agent Washington, Michael J. Caboose & Agent Washington, Michael J. Caboose & Lavernius Tucker, Michael J. Caboose & Lavernius Tucker & Agent Washington
Comments: 6
Kudos: 52





	1. Smell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wlizards](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wlizards/gifts).



> Happy Valentines Day! This is my gift fic for [wlizards](https://wlizards.tumblr.com/) who requested sappy/fluffy/romantic for tuckington. I hope you like this, it kinda evolved as Wash learning about this thing he's feeling through the five senses. It also just has general blue team feels because I am a sucker for them being a family.

Consciousness comes with a strangled breath of cold air. It fills his lungs, expands his bruised and aching chest and exits in a rush of warm air that drifts away in a little cloud above his head. The air is filled with the smell of gunpowder, blood and the sharpness of winter. 

Snowflakes touch his cheeks, melt against his too warm skin. For someone lying in a pile of snow, Wash certainly feels too hot to be slowly freezing to death.

Another breath in and out, another small puff of air appears in front of his hazy vision. 

Sidewinder would be beautiful if it wasn’t so full of pain, a reminder of endless betrayals.

He’d done it to himself; Wash knew that. The Meta wasn’t Maine, no matter how much he’d thought deep down maybe he could be again. The proverbial knife in his back and the very real bullet holes through his front are testament to the bond that didn’t exist between them anymore. Not that it mattered. The Meta had gone over the cliff, Wash was going to bleed out in the snow. The project would be finished, finally. All of its agents dead.

Wash breaths in slowly again, closing his eyes. That sharp smell of winter cold is nice, if it's going to be the last thing he gets to experience. Better than some other ends he could have imagined for himself. 

“Hey asshole, could you be a little bit less of a dead weight and help us?”

“Tucker it is not nice to yell at sleeping people.”

Wash recognizes Caboose’s voice though he doesn’t know what the other man is talking about.

“Yeah, except we have a pretty pissed off military on its way and you want to drag the half dead freelancer home with us, so I’d say he should probably get his bleeding ass in gear if he doesn’t want to end up back in prison.”

This voice is less familiar but Wash knows it must be Tucker, since it doesn’t match any other voices of the sim troopers. Something lifts his arm and he tries to tug it back to his side weakly. Whatever the two blues are doing, it's making dying in the peace he’s finding in fallen snow much more difficult.

“Agent Washington you should probably stop pretending to sleep now. Tucker is being very pushy about naptime again.”

“Caboose would you just help me with this already? Jesus…”

Wash feels the chest piece of his armor lift and his ribs scream in pain, jolting Wash enough to actually gasp and open his eyes. 

“Fuckin’ finally,” Tucker grumbles. “Move your ass a bit quicker, it's hard enough to get this armor on never mind trying to put it on some uncooperative dick.”

He sits up, ignoring the way the world spins in nauseating loops. Next to them, Epsilon’s blue armor is being stripped off and Wash’s gray armor replaces it. Caboose has a can of spray paint and the fumes hit Wash next, overriding everything else until all he can focus on are the strips that are being painted onto the pale blue pieces of armor.

“What are you doing?”

“Saving you, obviously.”

Wash ignores Tucker, who is currently fitting the painted gauntlets back over his hand and arm. “Why are you painting it?”

“So that we can tell you apart from Church but also, you like the yellow and we want you to have something of your own since we have to leave your armor with Church now,” Caboose explains, the smile in his voice so obvious it hurts Wash to hear. 

He doesn’t understand their kindness, why they’re choosing to dress him as their friend and save him from both death and prison. To go as far as to paint the armor just because Wash has an affinity for the color yellow is so beyond his scope of thinking it drowns out in the white noise of approaching Hornets.

“Guys better hurry up, we have company inbound.”

Grif’s voice drifts over him but it’s lost in the pounding of blood in his ears as Tucker halls him to his feet. 

“Just stay upright long enough to fool the guards and then you can pass out in the back of the Warthog for all I care,” Tucker hisses, a helmet getting pushed over Wash’s head. His new helmet filters out the smell of battle, of his blood and of the snow. He’d almost miss it if he wasn’t being hauled into the back of a car to go somewhere with two blue soldiers he hardly knows. 

Soldiers he hardly knows but still saved him from the UNSC and a life behind prison bars. Wash doesn’t know what he thinks about any of this but he knows they at least won’t immediately kill him. Caboose’s chatter is a lull to Wash’s exhausted mind as they drive, leaving a swirl of snow and gray armor behind.


	2. Sight

There is an ache deep in his bones, stemming with each slow breath he draws. It’s oddly quiet and surprisingly warm, considering the last thing Wash remembers is snow. He blinks open his eyes to find solid gray walls above him and for just a moment he thinks he’s back in prison but no, that isn’t quite right either. There is a soft blanket laid over him, his armors missing and the injuries he knew he fell asleep with are wrapped in bandages. 

His legs protest as he throws them over the side of the bed but they hold as Wash stands up. Dizziness only makes his vision swim for a moment and then Wash is headed in whatever direction he hopes is out.

Wash finds no resistance as he walks; he doesn’t find much of anything actually. The base looks generic, gray walls, simple furniture, blue accents and soft glowing lights.

He finds the exit easily enough and is greeted by warmth. Sun spills over the tips of the valley, reflecting off the quiet stream that splits the middle of the valley in half. Wash lifts an arm to block the light from his eyes, squinting up at the sky. The sky's the clearest blue he’s ever seen, not a cloud in it to be found. Birds chirp from somewhere, a breeze blows through and ruffles his hair.

Everything is still; peaceful.

Wash lets his arm fall, tilting his face toward the sun. His eyes fall closed against the blinding light but he lets it warm his skin, slow his heart. 

He has no idea where he is, what’s happened since the cold and pain of Sidewinder but for just the briefest of seconds, Wash lets himself not care and simply enjoy the feeling of actually being alive.

“Agent Washington!”

Wash turns enough to see Caboose coming toward him, Tucker following at his heels. They’re out of their armor as well and are holding what appears to be food and medical supplies. They must have patched him up he realizes, or Tucker must have since Wash very much doubts Caboose would do a job that looks almost professional.

“You’re awake,” Tucker observes, eyeing Wash up and down before offering him a bottle of water. “Welcome back to the world of the living. You gave Caboose a few heart attacks on our way here.”

The water sloshes in the bottle as Wash tips it back, draining half of it in one go. It's cool on his tongue, refreshing in a way that only a dying man can understand. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he’d actually been until the bottle was empty and Tucker was handing him another one.

“What now?” Wash finds himself asking, voice quiet. 

Wash isn’t sure what prompted these two into taking him away from Sidewinder but he doesn’t really expect them to continue to offer help now that he’s mobile again. Hopefully they give him back his armor, weapons and he can try to make it somewhere before the UNSC figures out that the swapped body they’ve taken isn’t actually Wash. Maybe, with luck Wash really doesn’t believe he has, he can get far enough across the galaxy and live the rest of his life in hiding so he doesn’t have to go back to prison before he dies.

“Well I was going to make breakfast,” Tucker says, drawing Wash back to the present with its picture perfect everything that begs to lull Wash into a false sense of security. “Or maybe lunch I guess, since you slept all morning.”

Wash turns to look at them, Caboose with his big goofy grin and Tucker with a tiny little smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

“You aren’t… kicking me out?” Wash asks because that certainly doesn’t sound right and it most definitely doesn’t connect in his head.

“We just brought you all the way here dude. Why the hell would we kick you out?” Tucker asks, tilting his head.

“And also, it is lunchtime and no one can go anywhere on an empty stomach.”

Wash frowns as Tucker and Caboose head into the base, arguing about the supplies they have and what they’re going to make for lunch.They turn their backs to him, completely open to attack and trusting that Wash isn’t going to. Wash turns back to the serene landscape, drinking it in. He could leave, no one would stop him and he could run and maybe stay safe for a few years.

Curiosity stops him because these two soldiers had already stuck their necks out for him once, asked nothing in return and had simply taken him back with them to their base. He can already hear them bickering inside and somehow that seems to make the drab gray walls that look so much like his prison cell light up with a little bit of life.

Maybe he’ll stick around, just to see what they really want.

Lunch does sound nice. 


	3. Taste

Once, in a past that feels more distant than it actually is, Wash had a routine with a team that he called family. They would eat together, train together, fight together, laugh together. He’d felt like a part of something, something bigger than himself and for the first time in his life, that maybe he could fit in somewhere.

Once, Wash had believed that.

But that fragile hope had been shattered, the family fractured and the man that it left behind had needed to pull himself back together again, alone this time. Wash did eventually fit the pieces back together but the jagged edges didn’t quite fit how they once had. They were sharp, cut deep whenever he moved until the memories of his friends strangled him so much he found himself wishing they’d never existed at all.

Wash was certain that he would never again allow another team to get that close except two blue idiots had dragged him from the snow and into their lives. They had endless patience and trust which he had done nothing to earn but was still freely given.

“Lift your head enough to at least sip at your coffee.”

Wash ignores Tucker in favor of laying face down on the counter, mostly because he’s still asleep but maybe also a bit out of stubbornness simply because its Tucker telling him to do it.

Mornings at Blue Base are a rush of noise and chaos, something that had taken Wash forever to get used to. Now though he doesn’t bat an eye as Tucker drops something with a snarled swear and Caboose manages to catch himself on fire. Again. 

Tucker is usually the one to make breakfast, for the simple reason that Caboose will burn down the base if he’s allowed and Wash does not function in any capacity in the morning without at least three cups of coffee in him. Tucker is also the only person capable of making the evil coffee maker work but Wash refuses to admit this weakness to the aqua soldier.

“I put the milk and sugar in for you,” Caboose informs pleasantly. He seems completely oblivious to the fact that his shirt is smoldering which would have once concerned Wash, but considering last week Tucker had to put him out by spraying him with the sink nozzle, he’s stopped worrying how Caboose has managed to survive all of these years. “So now it's as pale as your face was when you tried to get Tucker out of bed and he wasn’t wearing any clothes.”

Wash groans, burying himself further into his crossed arms. “Caboose please let that go. I was just surprised.”

“Surprised at how hot I am.”

“I hate you,” Wash grumbles before finally lifting his head enough to carefully sip at his coffee mug. It is indeed made just how he likes, milky and sweet with just a hint of the coffee that actually makes up the drink. It's hot, burning his tongue slightly but Wash doesn’t mind, just slurps at it nice and slow. He savors it as much as he savors the idea that someone cares enough to remember how he takes his coffee, to make it for him every morning. It's a small but touching detail that he hadn’t expected anyone to take notice of and yet, each morning it's delivered exactly the same. 

Breakfast this morning is pancakes, the warm smell of it rousing Wash into a sitting position as a plate is pushed in front of him. Already there is a small bit of pale butter melting into the fluffy bread, coated with too much golden syrup that drips down the sides in little waves. Cavities could form in his teeth just from looking at it. Past memories of similar breakfasts have his mouth watering slightly for the sweetness that will melt on his tongue with the first bite.

Except instead of the little round circles he’s used to, since pancakes are usually round, today his are cut into the shape of hearts.

Wash looks over at Tucker’s plate, normal, round pancakes drowning in (considerably) less syrup and Caboose’s, still round but with only butter spread across the tops like it’s toast.

“What's up with the shapes?” he asks, slow and wary of the change that has only been made to his plate. 

“We are celebrating you!” Caboose cries, jabbing his fork in the air with a grin.

Turning to look at Tucker, Wash hopes to get a better explanation.

Tucker shrugs his shoulders. “You’ve been here with us for like, three months. We wanted you to know you’re appreciated and shit,” he explains like this is incredibly obvious.

“Tucker means loved. We want you to know that you are loved,” Caboose clarifies with a sincerity that Wash feels too jaded to believe.

“Yeah that too,” Tucker adds with a grumble and what looks like it might be a blush dusting his dark cheeks. 

There is a painful clench in Wash’s heart as he stares at the two across from him. Already Tucker is batting away Caboose’s wandering fork, Caboose whining his displeasure at the lack of sharing. Their attention is back on each other, arguing like they do in a way Wash has learned means they care about each other. The ease of their declaration, how both can go back to what they normally do right after, leaves his head spinning. If it had been a lie, a manipulative tactic, they would have paid attention to see if it was working. Instead two idiots who care for a reason Wash doesn’t understand, offer him up their love without expecting anything in exchange. 

“I don’t want to listen to you whine when you let your pancakes get cold because you aren’t eating them. Caboose broke the microwave again,” Tucker warns when he catches Wash staring at them. 

“Yeah-” Wash breaths, trying to swallow around the lump in his throat. “Thanks for breakfast.”

“Anytime man.”

Wash isn’t sure he knows how to let people in anymore but as he sits there eating heart shaped pancakes and drinking too sweet coffee, he knows that he wants to try. Maybe he can find a way to heal with the two people who offer love and ask nothing from him in return.


	4. Hearing

There are a lot of things in life that Wash isn’t proud of, things he’s done that he can never take back. Guilt eats at him in his nightmares, stares at him from behind shadowy corners, warns that he shouldn’t get to be happy when he’s left so many behind.

Wash had started coming outside late in the night when he couldn’t sleep, too wracked by emotions he didn’t know how to process. When Tucker had learned of it, he’d simply followed Wash out and joined him in companionable silence

When they do start to talk, Tucker brings up easy subjects. His kid, his life before he ended up in Blood Gulch, the dumb adventures their team had been on, the stupid shit they had gotten up to with the reds. Eventually Wash offers up his own stories, of his cats, of his tour during the Great War and finally the Project.

At first Wash thought he would never bring up what had happened there, the memories of his team too painful and the time so tainted with feelings of loss and betrayal it would close his throat with panic. Tucker is easy to talk to though, open and honest even with difficult subjects. He doesn’t shy away from telling Wash his opinions. Wash trusts him to keep the secrets too painful to bring up when the sun is high in the sky and he resumes his role as leader of Blue Team.

Tucker’s voice is soft when he speaks up that night, lulled by the warm night air. The moon is high and full, casting just enough light for them to see. Crickets chirp and the breeze rustles through the tall grass. Its serene, something Wash has finally started to allow himself to accept. 

“You had no way of knowing everything that was happening up there.” Tucker lays on his back beside Wash, arms folded under his head as he looks up at the star filled sky. “You did what you could when you knew, that's all anyone can hope for.”

Wash feels his fingers curl into fists, his nails biting into his palms. “Connie tried to warn me about what was going on. It's my fault they died, if I had been smarter… or faster-” His words bite off at the gentle brush of fingers against his elbow and Wash turns his head enough to look down at Tucker.

“It is not your fault. You were used just like the rest of them. Sometimes you have to just let them go, even if it sucks.”

“What if I can’t?”

Tucker shrugs slightly but his touch doesn’t withdraw, keeping Wash anchored in the present. “Ghosts can’t offer their forgiveness Wash, the only thing you can do is forgive yourself.”

The words echo and bounce around in his brain for the rest of that night. Long after Tucker falls asleep next to him, long after the moon starts to set and the sun starts to rise. 

Forgiveness.

How can he forgive himself when he doesn’t even understand the forgiveness Tucker and Caboose have given him? It haunts him when Tucker rouses him in the morning, it burns while he tries to shower away the lack of sleep, it turns the coffee in his mouth to ash while he sits at breakfast.

“What is the matter Agent Washington?” Caboose asks when all Wash can do is poke sullenly at his eggs. They sit on his plate, a piece of bacon curled in a half circle to look like a smile under two eyes. Caboose had rearranged their plates for breakfast, and it's so comical Wash could scream. 

He doesn’t deserve this.

“Why are you treating me like this?” he mumbles into his plate, voice hardened with bitterness. He needs to have this conversation, there is no way to keep pretending he isn’t some sort of monster.

Tucker glances up, wary just from the tone of his voice. “Treating you like what?”

“Like I’m one of you.”

“Uh- well you see,” Caboose says, using his overly patient voice at having to explain something that should be so obvious. “You are in blue armor now, so you are on the blue team. Those are the rules.”

“But I basically killed your friend.”

Silence shatters the morning air, choking the air with things they simply don’t talk about. It’s an unspoken rule, but a rule nonetheless.

They don’t talk about Church.

“When I made him come with me to face the Meta, to take down the Project, before all of this. I took him from you and he died,” Wash snaps, throwing his fork down. Emotions build like a volcanic eruption and the fears that had lingered just out of his reach all of these months, the things he’d ignored because he’d been happy again, explode as truths he can see and wields like a whip so the two sitting across from him will stop pretending he’s something other than the monster he’d become. “I killed him. I took him from you. You should hate me.”

The kitchen is silent, his words ringing.

“Church wouldn’t have gone anywhere or done anything that he didn’t feel was important,” Caboose says finally, voice solemn. There is pain there, but it isn’t directed toward Wash like he expects it to be.

“Yeah, he was kind of a lazy asshole like that,” Tucker adds, shrugging like it isn’t a big deal though Wash can see the hurt there. His muscles tense, his lips tighten in a frown but he doesn’t condemn Wash either. “It's okay, we’re used to this. Kinda blue team leaders shtick to drag the rest of us into their drama. At least you aren’t going to bring any crazy chicks home after you right?” Tucker jokes.

Wash looks at them, dumbstruck and lost.

“We miss Church,” Caboose confirms, reaching over to lay his hand over Wash’s. “But he was helping you. Church was good like that; he did what was right when it needed to be done because that’s just who he was.”

“The only one who hasn’t forgiven themselves is you Wash.”

Wash stares, feels Caboose nearly break his fingers in his tight hold and gives a weak nod because he isn’t sure he can form words right now, not with the things his team has just given him.

\---

Time marches on.

Blue Team eats breakfast each morning, builds forts in the cool den of the basement, draws pictures to decorate the walls in Caboose’s room, steals the Red Team flag more times that Wash can count. It seems so mundane but Wash never gets tired of it.

Tucker shows him how to get the coffee maker to work. 

Caboose takes him to his secret hiding spots and even offers Wash the invitation to use them whenever he feels sad.

Tucker finds some old beer and they sit around a small campfire with Grif until the middle of the night.

Wash cuts Caboose’s hair.

Red Team stops eyeing him with open suspicion and treats him like any other Blue Team member.

He gets into stupid arguments over chores with his teammates.

The Reds and Blues bake him an actual birthday cake and sing him happy birthday.

Wash learns of Blue Team sleep overs and is subjected to the cuddle pile that ensues.

Tucker kisses him for the first time under the stars in the blanket of a summer night chat.

Wash didn’t know he could feel happiness like this; a peace so deep he doesn’t jump at shadows or wake up screaming every night. He has a family, people that care about him. If he thinks about it for too long he gets choked up with emotions that he won’t let bubble over because if they do, he might never be able to turn them back off.

So of course that means his past returns to cut his new found peace off like an infected limb.

Carolina comes for him and everything Wash thought he’d built up is blown out from under his feet.

\---

The Reds and Blues don’t trust Carolina; she barks orders at them, she’s cold and angry and impatient. Wash follows her direction because how can he not? They're all that's left, he isn’t the only remaining Freelancer anymore. He owes it to her to follow whatever orders she gives.

It pushes Tucker and Caboose away from the Wash they’d come to know.

They try but Wash can see the cracks in their relationship forming. Caboose comes with because they’re going after Epsilon, Tucker comes because he has to protect Caboose. And Wash tells himself it's alright.They’re getting back their friend, their true leader.

He follows Carolina, tries to mediate when things get tense but Wash finds that he doesn’t really fit with either group anymore. To Carolina he is just a subordinate, to the blues he’s sided with the crazy freelancer.

Wash is alone.

They move from place to place and it gets harder to stomach. His insides ache, empty without the happiness that had started to fill him. Wash misses them desperately, longs for Caboose’s crazy stories and early morning base fires, yearns for Tucker’s midnight conversations on the roof and home cooked meals.

What does Wash know about keeping friends anyways.

And like all the answers that have been gifted to him lately in the storm that is his crazy life, Caboose comes to him with the simplest break down of it all.

They still trust him, because they’re friends.

When he talks to them, tests the waters by joking around, he doesn’t hear the jaded angry snap of answers like before, the reds and blues talk to him the same as they always have. Like he’s one of them, like Wash never stopped being one of them.

It clicks into place then, that Wash had been the one putting up the walls, pulling away in preparation to be discarded. His team had never left him at all, they’d been there waiting for him. They may have been a bit wary of his past come back to haunt him but they hadn’t left, hadn’t shoved him out or replaced him. They’d still been Tucker and Caboose, waiting for Wash to open up at his own pace.

And like an idiot, Wash had doubted them.

Hearing Carolina bark at them in that hologram chamber, demand their obedience to follow into a situation that could get them killed for a fight that isn’t theirs, it makes Wash’s insides burn with rage. The Reds and Blues don’t want to go, they’ve already done enough, been hurt enough for this project, by him.

She raises her gun at his team, at Tucker and Wash feels everything snap into place. The focus the last few weeks have been missing, like a camera lens just slightly out of focus, sharpens. Wash knows where he stands, where he should have been standing all along.

With his team.

His friends.

His family.

Wash raises his own gun, stares down the barrel and prepares himself to press the trigger if it comes to that.

Because he will.

For them.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is [here](https://tothebatcave53.tumblr.com/) if anyone wants to chat about rvb. It is my life blood currently. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated :)
> 
> If there are any typos, please forgive me. My kitten Cloud really wanted to 'help' on this piece and kept walking across my keyboard anytime I set the laptop down to go do something. It's because she's on red team and must destroy the dirty blues.


End file.
